Volume 2 - issue 1 - 2006

Editorial Volume 2 Issue 1

In Seminar.net's first year we published two issues, and we received recognition from fellow electronic publishers for our innovative use of short video clips offering authors the opportunity to introduce their contributions. There are some challenges when entering the world of digital communication, and one of them is certainly to take innovative steps towards multimodal ways of presenting academic knowledge. We would like our readers to forward their ideas and suggestions on how to make this journal’s communication of academic knowledge more inspired, vivid and helpful. We are planning three issues this year, and we are in the favourable position of continually receiving contributions that address the purpose of mediation and communication.

The current issue of Seminar.net, the first of Volume 2., is a cross-disciplinary accomplishment gathering together papers written by scholars from different disciplines, and they all contribute in significant ways to frame the field of “Media, technology and lifelong learning”.

“Our” field is definitely not mono-cultural. Historically it has attracted the interest of scholars from many areas. Lifelong learning, or rather distance education, has engaged researchers from a wide academic spectrum, specialists in chemistry, history, linguistics, economics…etc. Technology and educational technology has had a close relation to this field, but only occasionally managed to recruit media researchers. The enterprise of our journal is to bring them together and develop a discourse about the relationship between teaching and learning, communication and mediation. The importance of technology in communication and mediation is a core concern in the four articles we proudly present here.

A Swedish educationalist asked us why Norwegian teachers normally are so attentive to philosophical discourses. In his opinion they were a lot more patient with philosophical speakers than in the neighbouring countries. They accepted more reasoning, doubt and logical argumentation, than he was used to from his national context. Lars Løvlie, our first contributor, is a key national and international exponent of the philosophical essay and his philosophical style provides an answer to why this might be the case. Løvlie has played a significant role as provider of philosophical thinking in education the last three and a half decades, in articles, books, as well as in his teaching; for twenty years he held permanent tenure at Lillehammer University College, and has been at the University of Oslo for the last fifteen. His essay on “Technocultural education” was published in an anthology in Norwegian and in a much longer version three years ago. The essay takes us through reasoning about the relation between man and technology, with Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg introduced at the outset. Løvlie offers us an understanding of how and why the critique of educational technology in the 1960-ies in some way led to a misunderstanding of technology per se, and it took two decades to revive a notion of technology that was not conceived of as anti-human. Løvlie suggests that the interface between man and society, man and computers, man and the virtual network of knowledge can supplement or replace the concept of bildung. His contribution is a very challenging one, and will, hopefully, give rise to significant debate.

Wenche M. Rønning and Gunnar Grepperud write about student's actual use of ICT in their studies. They conducted a national survey in Norway on how adult students in flexible education made us of their available technologies. They found that even if the access to Internet is widespread and the potential for using ICT in advanced ways is obvious, this potential has been exploited to a lesser extent than expected. The basic functions used are e-mailing, exchange of files etc. Similarly, the use of ICT for discussions with fellow students and to collaborate in projects are features with flexible learning that are used less than expected. These are important and valuable insights, and based on solid empirical material. The authors provide us with evidence that on-line learning still has a way to go when it comes to surpassing conventional teaching on campus in terms of innovative methods.

Jens E. Kjeldsen provides us with fundamental critique of the PowerPoint software. For years this software has supplied the world of education, instruction and business communication with a transparent sort of media, without generating much else than admiration and astonishment, at least when successful users amaze novices. But over the years a growing suspicion has emerged, saying that, in spite of its transparency, it still has a profound effect on the message. Kjeldsen, whose research speciality is the political use of rhetoric, has aired this criticism in a keynote speech to the “Didactics and Technology” conference at Lillehammer University College in 2005. He has developed his address into an essay and we think it represents one of the most coherent and comprehensive contributions to date in its attempt to critique PowerPoint delivery. His essay is written in an overtly rhetorical style, which also underlines his message that any teacher or communicator needs to investigate the rhetorical situation first, before considering what kind of support a set of slides can provide for the understanding of the learner. His final point is that “media rhetoracy” is a dimension that needs to be employed to make communication useful and successful.

From the last article in this issue by Martin Engebretsen we learn that the correspondence between text and video is a complex matter, and that it challenges our common conceptions of multimodality. In essence, it addresses the matter of how texts and video can interact in the service of effective and purposeful communication. Martin Engebretsen argues, largely in the spirit of Kress and Leeuwen, that we are entering the era of semi-dynamic texts, in which our ability to read texts, both written and filmed, are harmonised. Inspired by his theoretically well developed views, and yet with good practical advice, we have taken practical steps to let the video that introduces all our articles take on a more transparent form. In practical terms this means that we will insert the videos in a Flash-format, that unlike Windows Media Player does not jump to the front and generate a new frame for the video display.

Seminar.net is an open access journal. The articles published in seminar.net are immediately accessible for all, in its full and authentic format. There is no charge for covering expenses for publication. The journal supports a Creative Commons Attribution-license which allows other users to share the work when acknowledging the author and first publication in this journal.

Review of the national digital survey

Monitor 2011(Egeberg, 2012) is a submission on the fifth quantitative survey of the Norwegian digital health situation completed by Egeberg et al. The survey is a qualified comparison foundation with international surveys on digital competence such as, e.g. PISA. Since 2003, the digital surveys have been completed every other year in Norway to identify indications on schools' digital state. The respondents who were chosen are a selection of school leaders, teachers and student in the 8th and 9th grades and level two in upper secondary school. The submissions research and results are also organized according to these three areas of participants.

Knut Lundby (red.)

We live in an age in which more and more of us are creating our own "digital stories". In 2008, 18% of Norwegian 16-24 year olds were recorded as being active bloggers over the previous three months (Statistics Norway, "ICT in households", 2nd quarter 2008) while more than 2/3 of American teenagers have uploaded self-produced material to the Internet, in the form of YouTube videos, photographs, blogs, stories, remixes etc. (Pew Internet). The numbers of these "user-made" cultural productions are growing year by year and spreading from the younger generation to us adults, who are now the group most increasingly represented on Facebook. In blogs and on Facebook the distinction between amateur and professional is largely meaningless.

John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam (eds.)

Reviewed byBirte HatleholPhD student in Media EducationNorwegian University of Science and TechnologyEmail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The anthology Story Circle is an international study of digital storytelling that discusses the phenomenon in a global context. The book contains 20 articles with contributions from a number of key specialists with wide-ranging experience in the field of DST.

Edited by Heidi Philipsen and Lars Qvortrup

Reviewed by Stephen Dobson Professor Lillehammer University College Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Introduction Two questions can be asked: firstly, not do we need another book on remediation, but why? And secondly, if this is the case, what kind of book should it be? This review spirals around these questions.

Department of Education, Mid Sweden University
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Dr. Anders D. Olofsson
Department of Education, Umeå University
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It seems suitable to begin this review by giving a brief description of the context in which the texts of this book are produced. If it fails to be regarded as a description, then we hope at least it can be regarded as one possible understanding of the context. When contextualizing a book, a good idea seems to be to start with a few words about the editor, Alison A. Carr-Chellman.